Dane Williamson, 18, who spent nine days in prison before being cleared of setting fire to Miss Selfridge in Manchester. Photograph: Chris Bull/Manchester Evening News
A teenager who spent nine days in prison after being charged with setting fire to Miss Selfridge during the Manchester riots has been cleared after new evidence emerged confirming his innocence.
Dane Williamson, 18, said he had had a nightmarish ordeal after he was charged with being involved in causing £500,000 damage to the Market Street store during the riots, despite having five alibis.
He was charged with criminal damage and being reckless over property damage or endangering life. His name was widely reported and Facebook groups were set up on which he was identified and subjected to abuse.
Williamson's flat in Salford was damaged by fire while he was on remand in Forest Bank prison; he lost all of his possessions and is now homeless. He suffered panic attacks after he was targeted by other prisoners who taunted him about what he had supposedly done.
A 50-year-old man has since been arrested in connection with the incident but Greater Manchester police say they are still searching for those who started the fire.
During his time on remand, Williamson said, he was called a firebug, told by prison staff he would be jailed for life, and initially locked up for 23 hours a day as a category A prisoner.
His solicitor, Kerry Morgan, criticised the judicial system for pursuing instant justice so much it resulted in an innocent man being locked up.
Williamson, who has spent much of his life in care and has two previous convictions, told the Manchester Evening News: "Being in Forest Bank was horrible. I had heard my name all over the radio. In prison I was being treated as if I was already guilty. It was quite scary and an experience I don't want to repeat.
"I was in there for nine days, 23 hours a day locked up in a cell. I was categorised as a category A prisoner at first then reduced to category B. I had a lot of snide comments from officers about the arson, like: 'You're that firebug,' 'You're gonna get time for this,' and 'They're gonna put you in Strangeways.'"
He added: "The worst thing that was said was: 'You're getting life and you're scum.' They must have told other prisoners because some would flick their fingers like a lighter in my face.
"I was going through hell. I was depressed. I was having panic attacks. The stress was awful. I feared I was going to get convicted for something I didn't do, which potentially carried a life sentence.
"While I was in custody I got the news from my solicitor that there had been a fire at my flat. That was very distressing. All my personal belongings and photos were destroyed. I lost my home. On top of everything else it was a final blow."
Williamson told how he had been arrested, saying: "One of my mates had said: 'Are you sure you were not involved in the riots? The photo of the arsonist looks a bit like you.'
"We had a laugh and a joke about it. Two police officers were stood in front of Phones 4 You, and I said: 'I'll prove it's not me,' and walked in front of the coppers. When I came out of the shop they grabbed me and then three more approached and asked if I had been involved in the riots. I said no.
"The next thing I was arrested in the middle of the street on suspicion of arson. I couldn't believe it. It was surreal. I was taken into police custody and it was all very distressing. I was interviewed at Pendleton police station and gave an account of where I was that day. Then I was interviewed again and they were trying to pin the offence on me and get me to admit it. I wasn't having any of it because it was not me."
He was charged with damage to the shop and presented before magistrates. He had been selling CDs on Market Street on the day of the riot but was at his brother's home in Salford during the evening.
Morgan, senior partner with Morgan Brown & Cahill, who represented Williamson, said: "They notified us as part of their duty of ongoing disclosure that they had checked footage in relation to Dane's account of where he was during the day and that CCTV showed him wearing similar clothes to the arsonist, but slightly different.
"Also a police officer had identified someone other than Dane who he thought was the suspect. Those two things undermined their case and as a result Dane was bailed on Thursday by the recorder of Manchester and later that day we received notification that the case against him was being discontinued."
Williamson has spent 17 of his 18 years in care, living in children's homes and foster homes. He has two previous convictions: for possession of cannabis in March this year, and burglary three years ago, when he and friends broke into the reception of a holiday camp. For both offences he was given a youth referral order.
He is annoyed that people were setting up Facebook pages about the riots, naming him and defaming him. He says he does not condone violence or rioting. This year, with the help of the charity Barnardo's, he moved into his own flat in Broughton, Salford, and has completed business courses at college.
Helen Carter @'The Guardian'

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Financial world dominated by a few deep pockets

Conventional wisdom says a few sticky, fat fingers control a disproportionate slice of the world economy’s pie. A new analysis suggests that the conventional wisdom is right on the money.
Diagramming the relationships between more than 43,000 corporations reveals a tightly connected core of top economic actors. In 2007, a mere 147 companies controlled nearly 40 percent of the monetary value of all transnational corporations, researchers report in a paper published online July 28 at arXiv.org.
“This is empirical evidence of what’s been understood anecdotally for years,” says information theorist Brandy Aven of the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh.
The analysis is a first effort to document the international web of relationships among companies and to examine who owns shares — and how many — in whom. Tapping into the financial information database Orbis, scientists from ETH Zurich in Switzerland examined transnational companies, which they defined as having at least 10 percent of their holdings in more than one country. Then the team looked at upstream and downstream connections, yielding a network of 600,508 economic actors connected through more than a million ownership ties.
This network takes on a bowtie shape, with a large number of diffuse actors in the wings and a few major players tangled up in the tie’s knot. So while it’s true that ownership of publicly held corporations is broadly distributed, says complex systems scientist James Glattfelder, a coauthor of the new work, “take a step back and it’s all flowing into the same few hands.”
While any man on the street may have predicted this outcome, the economic literature portrays markets as so dynamic that they lack hot spots of control, Glattfelder says.
Researchers aren’t sure what to make of the core’s interconnectedness. On the one hand, it could expose the whole network to risk.
“Imagine a disease spreading,” says Aven. “If you have a high school where everyone’s sleeping together and one person gets syphilis, then everyone gets syphilis.”
But on the flip side, she notes, interconnectedness can lead to better self-policing and positive behaviors, such as fair labor practices or environmentally friendly policies.
And even though the status of many players in the analysis has changed drastically since 2007 (now-defunct Lehman Brothers is a key element of the core), the analysis shows that ownership is becoming increasingly concentrated and increasingly transnational, says Gerald Davis of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Because interpreting and analyzing these kinds of data is difficult, he says, the analysis serves more as “an impression of the moon’s surface you get with a telescope. It’s not a street map.”
Ownership can be difficult to study internationally because holding shares in a mutual fund doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing in the U.S. as it does in communist China. And even within a single country ownership can be hard to tease out, says economist Matthew Jackson of Stanford University. For example, when an individual invests in a mutual fund or even purchases shares through an institution like Merrill Lynch, the firm is often still the official owner of the assets. And even when shareholders do have voting rights, they may not exercise them.
“This becomes worrisome if everyone is like me and says I’ll let Vanguard do the voting,” says Jackson. “Maybe we should be a little bit worried. I don’t know if we should be.”
Rachel Ehrenberg @'Science News'

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Statement by the NATO Secretary General on the situation in Libya

The Qadhafi regime is clearly crumbling. The sooner Qadhafi realises that he cannot win the battle against his own people, the better -- so that the Libyan people can be spared further bloodshed and suffering.

The Libyan people have suffered tremendously under Qadhafi’s rule for over four decades. Now they have a chance for a new beginning. Now is the time for all threats against civilians to stop, as the United Nations Security Council demanded. Now is the time to create a new Libya – a state based on freedom, not fear; democracy, not dictatorship; the will of the many, not the whims of a few.
That transition must come peacefully. It must come now. And it must be led and defined by the Libyan people.
NATO is ready to work with the Libyan people and with the Transitional National Council, which holds a great responsibility. They must make sure that the transition is smooth and inclusive, that the country stays united, and that the future is founded on reconciliation and respect for human rights.
Qadhafi's remaining allies and forces also have a great responsibility. It is time to end their careers of violence. The world is watching them. This is their opportunity to side with the Libyan people and choose the right side of history.
We will continue to monitor military units and key facilities, as we have since March, and when we see any threatening moves towards the Libyan people, we will act in accordance with our UN mandate.
Our goal throughout this conflict has been to protect the people of Libya, and that is what we are doing.
Because the future of Libya belongs to the Libyan people. And it is for the international community to assist them, with the United Nations and the Contact Group playing a leading role. NATO wants the Libyan people to be able to decide their future in freedom and in peace. Today, they can start building that future.
@'NATO'